Diving in Cousteau's world

I wasn't sure what I'd find on Petit St. Vincent, a small emerald green island tucked away at the bottom of the Grenadines. I was heading to this lightly travelled region of the Caribbean to scuba dive with a childhood hero of mine: Jean-Michel Cousteau, son of the legendary underwater pioneer Jacques Cousteau.

The eco-resort of Petit St. Vincent, named after the island, partnered with Jean-Michel Cousteau to open a new dive centre. But to get his blessing, the resort had to create a program that involved the greening of the island and the reef, educating guests and outreach to local communities on neighbouring islands.

"Coral reefs are so beautiful it's almost spiritual," Philip Stephenson, the resort co-owner, told me. "It's a moral imperative to protect them – as well as commercial good sense for an island resort that hosts snorkellers and divers. … It's shocking how much storms, pollution, viruses, acidification, and lionfish have screwed up the Caribbean reefs."

Just like Stephenson, I have been diving in the Caribbean since the 1970s, and during that time 80 per cent of its coral reefs have either died or are in poor shape.

But the coral reefs around Petit St. Vincent are good by Caribbean standards, with the best visibility and the most colourful coral in the southern Grenadines. The finest diving here is on the Mayreau reefs. It's absolutely beautiful, specifically Mayreau Gardens Deep, Mayreau Gardens Shallow, Mayreau Valley and the wreck of the Purini on the west side of Mayreau. Cousteau's environment program will only make them better.

And as I soon discovered, Stephenson's resort was far from a place to just eat and sleep between dives.

As soon as I walked down the jet gangway at Barbados's international airport, I was greeted by a smartly dressed woman holding a sign with my name on it. She whisked me through both Barbadian passport control and customs and immigration for St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Moments later I climbed aboard an eight-passenger airplane for our flight to Union Island, where my five new travelling companions and I boarded the Poseidon, Petit St. Vincent's luxurious water taxi.

On-board Poseidon, I met Jean-Michel Cousteau and his wife, Nancy, who had flown in from Tahiti for the opening of his Caribbean Divers at the resort. It was an exciting moment. Outside of my father, no one influenced my early adolescent years more than Cousteau and his father, Jacques. Chatting with Cousteau, we'd start off as if engaged in a serious conversation but end in a burst of laughter once his clever punch lines sank in.

Arriving at the island, we were offered welcoming rum-based refreshments and, soon, golf carts drove onto the pier to take us to our cottages. I'd never felt so relaxed after eight hours of travelling.

Topographically diverse, Petit St. Vincent's 47 hectares are lush with tropical vegetation. The resort's 22 cottages are spread around the island on small, intimate sandy beaches and bluffs with stunning vistas of either the Atlantic Ocean or Caribbean Sea. Looking out, I could see we were surrounded by coral reefs – even the farthest were only 20 minutes from the island's dock.

My villa reminded me of a typical West Indian cottage with its pitched roof and arched doors, similar to the house I lived in in the Bahamas during the late 1970s. The elegant interior, however, did not. Recently renovated, sliding glass doors opened onto wide decks that ended only metres away from the ocean's edge on a secluded white sandy beach. It was heaven.

The doors don't have locks, which took me a few days to get used to. There are only so many ingenious ways to hide your wallet, card cards, cash and passport. But by the third day I gave up and left it all in the open. Nothing went missing, and at night I left the sliding doors wide open to catch the breezes coming in off the ocean. Gently rolling waves breaking on the beach lulled me to sleep, much as they did decades ago at my family's cottage on Georgian Bay in Ontario. And just like the old days, there weren't any electronics in the cottages: If you're addicted to your smartphone, prepare to go cold turkey. To communicate with resort staff, guests leave notes in hollow pieces of bamboo outside the cottage. Every half hour, two staff members in a golf cart passed by to pick up any instructions.

One of the resort greening projects put forward by Cousteau and his team included water conservation. The resort now collects more rainwater, and reuses water by filtering it. This way, water-borne nutrients are not flushed out into the surrounding ocean, which can harm coral reefs by encouraging excess algal growth.

The next morning on board the 12-metre dive boat L'Aventure, the pampering continued. We didn't need to touch our scuba diving equipment, from setup to cleanup; the dive master and crew did it for us.

We dove with Cousteau, who wanted us all to learn more about ocean conservation and the importance of coral reef biodiversity. "People protect what they love," he told us as we headed out to the reef.

Stepping off the back of the dive boat, I slid beneath the surface of the Caribbean's warm, gin-clear waters. We conducted last-minute equipment checks and one by one the five of us slowly descended to the brightly coloured coral reefs of Mayreau Valley.

Looking down at my depth gauge I noted we'd sunk to 15 metres of our 27-metre dive. Suddenly, out of the corner of my right eye, I spotted a large school of blue tang fish. They shimmered in the sunlight with an almost silver glow. Moving in unison, as if a massive gyrating wall, the school swam toward us before veering away and disappearing as quickly as they had appeared.

It was a beautiful, lazy wall dive and we let the current carry us alongside the reef, passing many different species of corals, sponges and fish along the way. At the bottom, the water is 29 C and – since I'm used to Canadian cold-water, dry-suit diving – I found it almost too warm to wear the thin three-millimetre tropical wet suit.

With one exception, the biodiversity I witnessed on the coral reefs during my visit was good. The fan and brain corals were healthy and on one dive, a few harmless nurse sharks slowly moved between the coral heads. There was an abundance of large orange barrel sponges, rays, turtles, green and spotted moray eels, barracudas, spotted drum fish, queen triggerfish, porcupine fish and many of the other Caribbean reef fish in these waters.

For me, diving with Cousteau was a dream come true. But I was glad the waters and reefs surrounding Petit St. Vincent also provided some unforgettable scuba diving.

IF YOU GO

WestJet and Air Canada fly non-stop to Grantley Adams International Airport in Barbados from Toronto. From Barbados, Mustique Airways flies direct to Union Island (the flight – available for a maximum six people at a time – is exclusively for guests of Petit St. Vincent) at a cost of $615 (U.S.) a person. The last step is a 20-minute, $35 boat ride to the resort.

Cottages start at $1,100 a night in the low season and $1,400 in the high season (Jan. 5 to April 30). Rates are based on double occupancy and include three meals a day, non-alcoholic beverages, coffee and afternoon tea, unlimited room service, and non-motorized water sports and facilities.

For more information, visit petitstvincent.com.

The writer was a guest of the resort. It did not review or approve the story.